On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine
Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music
in New York.
Though there was already talk of the erection, in
remote metropolitan distances “above the Forties,”
of a new Opera House which should compete in costliness
and splendour with those of the great European capitals,
the world of fashion was still content to reassemble
every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the
sociable old Academy. Conservatives cherished
it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping
out the “new people” whom New York was
beginning to dread and yet be drawn to; and the sentimental
clung to it for its historic associations, and the
musical for its excellent acoustics, always so problematic
a quality in halls built for the hearing of music.
It was Madame Nilsson’s first appearance that
winter, and what the daily press had already learned
to describe as “an exceptionally brilliant audience”
had gathered to hear her, transported through the
slippery, snowy streets in private broughams, in the
spacious family landau, or in the humbler but more
convenient “Brown coupe.” To come
to the Opera in a Brown coupe was almost as honourable
a way of arriving as in one’s own carriage;
and departure by the same means had the immense advantage
of enabling one (with a playful allusion to democratic
principles) to scramble into the first Brown conveyance
in the line, instead of waiting till the cold-and-gin
congested nose of one’s own coachman gleamed
under the portico of the Academy. It was one
of the great livery-stableman’s most masterly
intuitions to have discovered that Americans want
to get away from amusement even more quickly than
they want to get to it.
When Newland Archer opened the door at the back of
the club box the curtain had just gone up on the garden
scene. There was no reason why the young man
should not have come earlier, for he had dined at
seven, alone with his mother and sister, and had lingered
afterward over a cigar in the Gothic library with
glazed black-walnut bookcases and finial-topped chairs
which was the only room in the house where Mrs. Archer
allowed smoking. But, in the first place, New
York was a metropolis, and perfectly aware that in
metropolises it was “not the thing” to
arrive early at the opera; and what was or was not
“the thing” played a part as important
in Newland Archer’s New York as the inscrutable
totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his
forefathers thousands of years ago.
The second reason for his delay was a personal one.
He had dawdled over his cigar because he was at heart
a dilettante, and thinking over a pleasure to come
often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its realisation.
This was especially the case when the pleasure was
a delicate one, as his pleasures mostly were; and
on this occasion the moment he looked forward to was
so rare and exquisite in quality that—well,
if he had timed his arrival in accord with the prima
donna’s stage-manager he could not have entered
the Academy at a more significant moment than just
as she was singing: “He loves me—he
loves me not—he loves me!—”
and sprinkling the falling daisy petals with notes
as clear as dew.
